Andrew Russell Forsyth, FRS,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(18 June 1858,

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

– 2 June 1942,

South Kensington South Kensington, nicknamed Little Paris, is a district just west of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with ...

) was a British mathematician.

Life

Forsyth was born in

on 18 June 1858, the son of John Forsyth, a marine engineer, and his wife Christina Glen. Forsyth studied at

Liverpool College Liverpool College is a school in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, England. It was one of the thirteen founding members of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC). History Liverpool College was the first of many public schools founded in the Victorian E ...

and was tutored by Richard Pendlebury before entering

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

, graduating

senior wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who a ...

in 1881. He was elected a fellow of Trinity and then appointed to the chair of mathematics at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

at the age of 24. He returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in 1884 and became

Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics The Sadleirian Professorship of Pure Mathematics, originally spelled in the statutes and for the first two professors as Sadlerian, is a professorship in pure mathematics within the DPMMS at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on a bequest ...

in 1895. Forsyth was forced to resign his chair in 1910 as a result of a scandal caused by his affair with Marion Amelia Boys, ''née'' Pollock, the wife of physicist

C. V. Boys Sir Charles Vernon Boys, FRS (15 March 1855 – 30 March 1944) was a British physicist, known for his careful and innovative experimental work in the fields of thermodynamics and high-speed photography, and as a popular science communicator th ...

. Boys was granted a divorce on the grounds of Marion's adultery with Forsyth. Marion and Andrew Forsyth were later married. Forsyth became professor at the

Imperial College of Science Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

in 1913 and retired in 1923, remaining mathematically active into his seventies. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 1886 and won its

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important ...

in 1897. He was a Plenary Speaker of the ICM in 1908 at Rome. He is now remembered much more as an author of treatises than as an original researcher. His books have, however, often been criticized (for example by

J. E. Littlewood John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to mathematical analysis, analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. H ...

, in his ''

A Mathematician's Miscellany ''A Mathematician's Miscellany'' is an autobiography and collection of anecdotes by John Edensor Littlewood. It is now out of print but ''Littlewood's Miscellany'' is its successor, published by Cambridge University Press and edited by Béla Bollo ...

'').

E. T. Whittaker Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...

was his only official student. Andrew Russell Forsyth - Golders Green Crematorium

He died in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on 2 June 1942 and was cremated at

Golders Green Crematorium Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000 (the equivalent of £135,987 in 2021), ...

. Forsyth received the degree of ''Doctor mathematicae (

honoris causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hono ...

)'' from the

Royal Frederick University The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

on 6 September 1902, when they celebrated the centennial of the birth of

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

Niels Henrik Abel Niels Henrik Abel ( , ; 5 August 1802 – 6 April 1829) was a Norwegian mathematician who made pioneering contributions in a variety of fields. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solvin ...

Family

Forsyth married Marion Amelia Pollock in 1910.

Works

A Treatise on Differential Equations
(1885) ** translated into German as ''Lehrbuch der Differentialgleichungen'' (1912)
Theory of Functions of a Complex Variable
(1893)
Geodesics on an oblate spheroid
1895–96)
Theory of Differential Equations
(1890–1906) six volumes
Lectures on the Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces
(1912)
Lectures Introductory to the Theory of Functions of Two Complex Variables
1914) * ''Solutions of the Examples in a Treatise on Differential Equations'' (1918) * Calculus of Variations (1927)
Geometry of Four Dimensions
(1930) * Intrinsic Geometry of Ideal Space (1935
vol. 2

References

External links

Royal Society obituary

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Forsyth, Andrew 1858 births 1942 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Scottish mathematicians 19th-century British mathematicians 20th-century British mathematicians Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Royal Medal winners Senior Wranglers Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Liverpool Academics of Imperial College London People educated at Liverpool College Scientists from Glasgow Sadleirian Professors of Pure Mathematics

Life

Family

Works

See also

References

External links